U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, April 10, 2026.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that the United States would close the Strait of Hormuz after talks in Pakistan to end the war with Iran hit a deadlock.
“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the world’s greatest navy, will begin the process of blocking any ships attempting to enter or exit the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. “The blockade will begin soon. Other countries will also be involved in this blockade. Iran cannot be allowed to profit from this illegal act of extortion.”
The US announcement of a strait blockade is likely to dash hopes that the war will end within days after peace talks in Islamabad. It also threatens to worsen the economic crisis that has gripped the global economy since the war broke out and Iran began restricting access to the strait, a chokepoint that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil.
President Trump said the U.S. blockade was an effort to prevent Iran from policing the strait and profiting economically from it while the rest of the world suffers from blockades.
“At some point, we will reach a standard where ‘everyone is allowed in, everyone is allowed out.’ But Iran is not allowing that to happen, just saying, ‘There might be a mine somewhere,’ and no one knows but them.” “This is global blackmail, and the leaders of countries, especially the United States, will never be blackmailed.”
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